Part 8

Nor are flies less universal than ants. They are always, everywhere. They attack one's eyes shamefully; but the slightest scratch anywhere calls for immediate protection against their poisoning attentions.

A plaster of wetted clay is not a particularly cleanly covering; but it acts very well for protective purposes, and I believe it also possesses curative properties.

At meal times a piece of meat lifted from hand or ground to the mouth becomes so thickly covered with the pests that the diner finds it imperative to flourish it around him and cry "Shoo!" blow hard upon it, or make one or two feints at biting before taking the stuff in.

But they are philosophers, these men of the bush, and so declare that the flies purify the atmosphere, demolish poisonous matters in the air, prevent the spread of devastating disease--and so on. Some people, tho', if snakes were so numerous that folks couldn't travel the country without wearing a snake-proof suit, would certainly discover how very essential the reptiles were to--perhaps the armour-maker's existence.

* * * *

Up North--or was it down South--a talkative gentleman with a glass eye (named--the man's I mean--Blank), keeps a store. One day, _ipse dixit_, he was shoeing a restive horse. The flies were very bad. His glass eye suddenly pained him; and when he made effort to take it out of its socket, to his horror, he found he couldn't. The flies had bunged it!

That is the man's story, not mine. I can only vouch for their infinite capacity to bung eyes not made of glass--and to imperil souls.

* * * *

None of the eye-protecting fixings seem to be satisfactory for use by a cyclist in country where careful steering is called for. Those which will keep out the flies are objectionable, for various reasons. The principal being that they also obscure the vision.

At Oodnadatta, a fly-guard made of very fine meshed wire was given to me, and I carried it right through to Palmerston. It was made as a very large pair of spectacles, and when folded occupied but very little space. Because of a few faults, I did not often wear it. It darkened the ground, got uncomfortably hot at times, and when a fly did get underneath, the little wretch invariably wagged its tail with joy at having a whole eye to itself, and "wired in" so avariciously, that hunting it out became an instant necessity. And then outsiders, dozens of them, would hang on to the wires and search for a wide opening, shoving their stings through now and again in the hope of reaching something. Nevertheless, if one of these wire-meshed guards could be had to fit close all round the eyes, it would be as good as, if not better, than most of the others. Goggles with colourless glass were not to be had. The netting of the ordinary hat-veil is too open; a cyclist when riding does not shake his head about so the flies soon enter through. Cheese or mosquito nettings are hot, sticky and uncomfortable; and dangling corks are too ornamental.

* * * *

There were several of the ant-repulsing citadels at Kelly's Well, and in one of them, close by a bush to which I could fasten Diamond, I spread my sheet of waterproof. But my camp companions pressed upon me some of their own blankets--generosity of a prince was that encountered from first to last.

Well-fed, and kicking about under warm blanketing, with a sense of safety, and with food and water at one's hands--yes, certainly these things have their advantages.

* * * *

The dingoes gathered round and howled; but to their noises I paid little heed--until someone moved. Then, looking out, I saw one of my hosts kneeling on his bed clothes, and in the act of pointing a rifle towards where a loud-voiced member of the serenading party sat.

The blackboys' sleeping quarters were near the fireplace; and just after I had become fully conscious of what was going on and expected to hear a shot fired, one of the "boys," rising on his elbow, suddenly exclaimed pleadingly, "No shoot that one dingo, mitta! Him my fadder, I thinkit."

At which interruption the one spoken to muttered--was that a curse?--I laughed, and the dingo vanished.

It was not the first time that thus the white man had been robbed of his prey. For to hold the hand in such circumstances is only prudent.

In the morning the hat of the aboriginal who had saved his father's second-life was missing; but after a short search it was recovered some little distance from the camp--or its remains were discovered, in two parts. The brim was torn from the crown, and a strip of about an inch between them had been bitten out all round.

I reckoned nothing would come amiss to that species of wild animal which would chew up a nigger's hat-band, and for ever after was at night time more or less uneasy about my bicycle's tyres.

The natives of these parts hold pretty generally to this doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls: your father, dying, may "jump up whitefellow," or be changed into a kangaroo, an emu, an eagle, or a dingo--mayhap even an ant.

One of the natives was named the equivalent for kangaroo, with something tacked to it. Wherefore he must never taste kangaroo flesh.

It has been written somewhere:--"Australian natives are treacherous. You should never in the bush let one walk behind you. Keep him always in front." A bushman told me that was altogether wrong advice. "If you have any cause to be suspicious of a nigger's intentions," he said, "keep him behind you, and well out of sight at that--even if you have to hit him on the head with a waddy to make him stay there."

This authority was rather violently disposed towards the natives, whom, _inter alia_, he charged with the atrocious crime of having once kidnapped a dog of his. "If anyone of them starts giving you back answers," said he, "to shoot is about the only way to make quite sure about that one. It's fine," and he laughed, "to see the beggar's jump." He assured me he had, on occasion, known 'em to jump as high as seven feet.

* * * *

From Kelly's Well the 32 miles to Tennant's Creek provided the best stretch of cycling ground for many a day. The soil was of a firm loamy nature, covered in places with gravelly quartz and ironstone.

The first part was over level ground timbered with mulga and box, and with not a hill in sight anywhere to east or west; but at about 20 miles some low flat-topped scattered rises appear, and then, at 26 miles, the McDonnell Ranges. Here ironstone and quartz veins outcrop, and colors of gold are found in many of the gullies.

An excellent track continues on and over the range (which is not a high one) and then level country again spreads out.

* * * *

I had eaten breakfast at Kelly's well; but one meal, or a second does not long suffice, for a man who has been for days hungry. Tissues get eaten away, and it takes days--nay, perhaps weeks--of substantial feeding before the loss can be made up and the used tissues replaced or replenished. At Tennant's Creek, during the many days I remained at the telegraph station, I could eat almost continuously. My happiest thoughts were centered around the dinner table, and there was a savage delight in the partaking of every meal.

At many of those stations I was ashamed of my appetite. Everywhere I was apologising (needlessly of course) because of this unnatural-seeming craving for food which for days possessed me. And it appeared so extraordinary to see people sit down to a viand-loaded table and eat only a little. And that, too, without much apparent enjoyment! When a fellow finds he has eaten much more than two others together, at the same table, he is apt to be backward in asking for more; and, perhaps, therefore it was that often when the time had arrived to get up from a meal I felt reluctant to leave without taking what remained of the joint with me.

* * * *

The telegraph station at Tennant's Creek is, in outward appearance, like a substantial stone farmhouse, and is situated out on the plains 3 or 4 miles past the foot of the McDonnell Range. There is a main building, three-roomed. One of these is used as a harness room; there are several small cottages and sheds; and a large stockyard is at no great distance away.

In the Creek, about a quarter of a mile from the station there are some nearly permanent waterholes, and a freshwater well is sunk on its nearer bank. Close by this well is a bath-house, and a vegetable garden--adjuncts, these latter, of all the telegraph stations. As at the other stations also, cattle and sheep, horses and milch cows are kept and attended to or shepherded by blackfellows.

Located here was, in addition to the officer in charge (whom I had often heard spoken of, always in terms of high praise and respect, down Alice Springs way), an assistant (operator), a white man cook, and one other white employee, this last generally useful hand.

* * * *

As I have already stated, I had very often straightened out the rat-trap pedal cross-bars of the bicycle. The unavoidable stumps, small ant-hills and prostrate telegraph-pole ends, _et hoc_, had bent them inwards frequently; and as one of the four exhibited signs of the very rough usage to which it had by this time been subjected, the handy man obliged me by taking it out altogether and replacing it with an exact counterpart of one of the less marked ones--a substitution effected as neatly as if one of the most expert of cycle-repairing shop hands had been the craftsman.

Of this trifling alteration, which was in no way necessary, I have paused to write, for the triple purpose of giving acknowledgment to the ability of the workman, and of remarking that after all the rough usage to which it had been subjected, the bicycle still continued to look almost as if just from the shop window (in reality it was better than new, since it had been tested and proven), and, thirdly, of making for myself opportunity to say that, notwithstanding the many haul knocks it received after leaving Tennant's Creek, it yet kept in that excellent condition which was my pride to the very last moment I had use for it.

* * * *

Having no wish for a recurrence of those hungering qualms which had been felt before arriving there, I departed from Tennant's Creek loaded up with all the provisions I could conveniently or otherwise stow away inside and out, and proceeded for 33 miles over ground which in places was fair, but which for its greater part was rather sandy for cycling over, to water and a camp, at one of the Hayward Creek branches, of which there were three to be crossed. The route was waterless between Tennant's and this creek, although Phillip's Creek was met with at 21 miles, and the Gibson at 27; also several low hill-ranges were passed through.

An excellent sketch plan of the route had been made out for me at the telegraph station by the exceedingly obliging officer in charge there and his assistant; nevertheless, there were so many creeks to be crossed and, as it seemed to me re-crossed, that almost before the first day was over I continually doubted which of them was the particular one I was next coming to or had last left behind.

This doubt, however, did not exist on arriving the following day at Attack Creek, some 12 miles on from the Hayward, because of the beautiful sheet of clear fresh water which existed in it. This Attack Creek is deep, and its sides are fringed with giant gum trees. It is not wide; but the nearly permanent sheet of water when I passed there, was fully a quarter of a mile in length between the banks.

There is a solitary grave away up from the crossing; and, again, after passing the Morphett (10 miles on), is the last resting place of a traveller who, a couple of years back, when dying of thirst, attempted unsuccessfully to so damage the telegraph line as to attract to the spot a repairing party.

Not every man can climb a telegraph pole; and one cannot cut or undo stout and firmly fastened wires with one's teeth.

Near the Morphett Creek a narrow pad branches off to the west of the telegraph line, loops out to the headquarters of a very seldom heard of cattle station, and proceeding thence, rejoins the line track at about 35 miles south of Powell's Creek.

One may keep nearer to the telegraph line and travel _via_ Kuerschner Ponds; but against going that way I had been advised. The track was said to be very rough. Nevertheless the straight-ahead road might be the better for cycling. The good people of these parts do not regard tracks or the cyclist's eyes. It has often been recommended to me to turn off at certain places from "hard gritty rises" on to where the track runs over "nice soft flats." Of course the flats were found in such places to be well grassed and suitable for travelling mobs of cattle, whereas the gritty rises (some, good cycling) invariably were barren or spinifex-covered.

Right up almost from Tennant's Creek to the re-junction spoken of, the 88 miles stretch of country is of a very unkindly nature, for the stranger, anyway. The supplies which are annually sent to the various telegraph stations are forwarded only as far as Tennant's Creek from the south; down as far as Powell's, they come from Palmerston. The intervening distance (from Tennant's to Powell's, 123 miles), does not therefore bear those evidences of traffic which are distinguishable between most of the other stations.

* * * *

This lack of clear guiding marks is most troublesome about the stony creeks, whether there be water in them or not. When a waterhole has been reached it is not always easy to pick up the track on the other side. In many cases there is no pad at all visible to the unaccustomed eye, as cattle and horses spread out on approaching water, wander aimlessly awhile after drinking, and destroy all traces of a particularly beaten path, as not until long after leaving do they "string" again.

At waterholes, too, (and these remarks apply to many watering places higher up the road) the track is so "freaky." From one hole full or dry, you must pass straight on; from another, the track may take a sudden bend to the east or the west; at still another, the pad does not pass the water, but, after leading to it, forms with the pad going out, more or less of a V; while at a fourth, you have to double back for some distance on the pad by which you entered. When the grass is high and the track not clear, or where many paths lead out from, where one finds oneself, as it were, "cornered," and when one does not know whether the follow-on section of his road runs northerly, easterly, or westerly, one is liable to feel--well, uncomfortable.

As cattle had been lately running in some parts of the country in this stage, between Tennant's and Powell's Creeks, the main pad, if there be one at all, was cut into in places by better beaten ones, and in other places there were such puzzling branches that the non-bushman traveller might be just as likely to follow up the wrong one as the right. How it may be with the expert bushman, I do not know.

Before reaching the cattle station (known as Bankabanka, I believe; there was no one at home except a few blackfellows and lubras, who greatly enjoyed the sight of a so ragged a whitefeller and the bicycle, but who were a very inoffensive lot of people), I was so fortunate as to come upon a couple of horsemen; and in their company I was glad to "spell" awhile. Valuable directions also were obtained about those pads ahead which led out and in again to the telegraph line, and I had word, too, of a mob of sheep in charge of a white man, who, by this time, was expected to be camped somewhere between the station and the line.

After a day's travelling away from the cattle station, first over an expansive, luxuriantly-grassed plain on which not a tree was to be seen for many miles, and then into and through rough, rugged ranges, I reached the waterhole on which the sheep were camped, and spent there a happy night, eating and thinking of the fresh mutton, cake, and other acceptable novelties with which the gentlemanly drover-boss plied and supplied me.

Referring to my note-book, I make out the following random jottings:--"The mulga has disappeared. The prevailing trees appear to me to be dwarfed, stunted gums; whether in truth they are properly gums or box, or peppermint, or what--I cannot tell; but they are clearly of the Eucalyptus family. Nearly all white-stemmed, and averaging from 20 to 30 feet in height. The yellow blossoms of a wattle bush relieve the lower but never thickly growing scrub. Extensive belts of spinifex; and, on less sandy soil, and about the creeks, many flats covered with long spear grass. This grass is over six feet high--a continual source of annoyance, as now is the time to catch the falling seeds; sharp pointed things these, which wriggle and twist about in one's clothes, until they enter so far that a fellow has to stop and pull them out of the various parts of him. Further north, the people tell me, this spear grass grows to a height of 12 feet (and over that; but 12 feet is tall enough for me), with worrying seeds of proportionate size. Have torn my handkerchief in two and wrapped a half around the extremity of each pyjama leg to prevent the obnoxious things accumulating around my ankles.

"Much walking--sand. Riding northerly; the cross shadows before and after midday add to the already many risks. And the pads are so narrow; branches of trees and bushes hit the face; often an eye-lash from an eye. Find myself at morning time or evening dismounting hurriedly to lead the bicycle over the shadow of a branch which I mistook for substance, and a minute after, running full tilt into a log which I had mistaken for a harmless shadow."

"Stony hills, small creeks, and grassed flats" was the order of the day on which I again struck the telegraph line; and along by that the track was both distinct and fair "going" passing between low hills to Renner Springs. Glazed pebbles and agates (of no value except as curios) were thickly scattered on the hill-tops and at the foot of the various rises for some distance.

* * * *

Where the pad led on to the line-track two natives were walking on ahead. On turning and seeing me they only backed a little from the twelve inches of highway, and looked astonished. I pulled up to interview them--or it may be I trembled so much with terror that I was unable to continue riding. Two very good specimens, these. Well set up and picturesquely ornamented with many cicatrices rising across the breasts and arms. One was able to speak comprehensibly; the other wore feathers in his hair, and looked from head to foot an unsophisticated savage, reminiscent of a Fenimore Cooper's Injun fresh starting on the war trail and bent fixedly on acquiring somebody's "skelp" for his wigwam. As it was, I daresay he was out on a hunt after bandicoots for his dinner.

After inquiring the distance to Renner Springs--which I knew to be about 15 miles--and getting the usually precise information "long way," from the one, I asked politely of the other what his name might perchance be. But he did not answer; and the spokesman, in explanation of this silence, probably, told me, "Him German blackfellow."

Ha! here was a discovery. The "Made in Germany" grievance had invaded the north-central Australian tribes!

"Sprecken sie Deutch, herr blackfellow?" He condescended to give me the disrespectful-sounding monosyllable "Yah!"

Now this was a serious quandary. I had used up all my German that seemed suitable for the occasion.

I struggled with memory for a few moments.

Ah, yes! "Hast die das Schloss?"

He shook his head, and said, "Er," in disgust.

Beyond this I could not go. It was, perhaps, just as well. Later on I knew what "German blackfellow" meant. When a white man can't make himself understood the 'bout camp black (who knows _he_ speaks pure English) says, disdainfully:--"What 'im pfeller talk? 'Im German, me tink it."

So it comes about that the "German blackfellow," is the blackfellow who no speak it Inglis--the "myall," the wild-fellow.

* * * *

Having cycled what I counted on as being the 15 miles, and while yet looking ahead expecting at any moment to catch sight of the Renner Springs station buildings, I was surprised to hear much shouting and many strange cries. A ridge chain ran parallel with the track, a quarter of a mile off, on my left-hand side; and in the bushes a little way out from this a dozen or more wurlies had been erected. From the vicinity of these wurlies scores of natives were now pouring, laughing, screaming, and yelling to each other to hurry up and see the circus. They had observed me before I had sighted them and were running towards a bend in the road ahead of me.

I slowed down; and as they were so considerate as to hoot back their yelping dogs, and as the pedalling operation appeared to divert them hugely (I believe they had never witnessed anything half so funny in their lives before), I stopped when part way along the line they formed to give them a better chance of satisfying to its full their very patent curiosity.

Those who had collected were of all sizes and ages, and most of them had left home so very hurriedly that they had quite forgotten to put on their "ulsters." But there were no females in the assembly. Here (and likewise back at the Stirling) I notice the lubras come but a very short distance from their wurlies, near which they remained standing--screaming during the first few minutes of the excitement with delight, and, I think, calling the dogs back.

Not from anyone of the crowd, for whose edification I spun the wheels round, could I get a word of white-fellow lingo; and all I have by which to remember my futile attempts at a conversation is a note written on the spot to the effect that they, in common with other of the natives whom I had met "laughed in fairly good English."

* * * *

The first beholding of adult blackfellows and blackfellowesses naked, may be slightly shocking to sensitive nerves. An uncomfortable, uneasy feeling will probably be induced. But this creepiness soon passes, and one comes to either look upon or pass unnoticed the ungarbed blackfellow (and later on the average lubra), as he might the apes and monkeys in a zoological gardens.

Some of the habits of those animals are theirs, too; when collected and watched awhile it will for evermore "go without saying" to the observer that they are natural-born hunters.

They have no thought for the things of the morrow, but they consider the birds of the air and how they shall catch them. The youths are adepts in the art of stone throwing; lubras, though, are by far the better hands. They ask not for money as wages--only "tucka," "toombacca," or "bacca," and "ole clo."

One of them in a quiet confidential chat gave it as his opinion--"White fella big one fool; him _work_ all the time!"

I explained how it might be: the whitefellow worked to save up money with which to purchase leisure in his old age--"all the same sleep all day _then_," I explained.

After ruminating--"Why not him sleep all day along-a _now_?" he asked puzzled. And so puzzled me.

* * * *

Sometimes there is a charm in the simplicity of their "English."

"That one big fool hoss," remarked a blackboy, referring to an animal which, instead of remaining near and feeding, had a tiresome habit of travelling afar off when hobbled out of an evening--"every day him walk about all night."

This boy had seen a kangaroo close by the camp, and made an observation to that effect to his employer,--thinking probably the latter would like to have a shot at it.

"What sort of kangaroo; Big fellow?"

"N-o," came the answer slowly, "not big pella."